The present invention relates to a digital contents vending machine for selling digital contents, or more in particular to a technique effectively applicable to a digital contents vending machine for selling personal digital contents the replay of which is limited to the purchaser.
With the development of the communication through the internet and satellites, a system has been developed to distribute and sell digital contents. This trend indicates that the computer and the network are required as an infrastructure for wide extension of the digital contents throughout the society. In the distribution and sales of the digital contents, the digital contents are required to be distributed or sent to a sales point in the vicinity of the general users, and to be sold from a vending machine.
The conventional digital contents vending machine is installed in convenience stores, for example. Such a vending machine has the function of searching for a commodity, outputting the order receipt for the ordered commodity, reserving for a commodity, copying from a CDROM to a medium, etc., whereby the digital contents selected by the customer are copied from the CD-ROM to other medium which is sold.
For preventing the illegal use of the digital contents, the function is required to limit and permit the use of the digital contents to the individuals who have legitimately purchased the particular digital contents. However, the conventional digital contents vending machine cannot sell the digital contents as a commodity permitted to be used only by a person. Therefore, the problem is that the illegal use of the sold digital contents cannot be prevented.
The conventional digital contents vending machine also lacks the function of preventing the illegal use of the original digital contents from which copies are produced. As a result, the illegal use in which the original digital contents stored in the CD-ROM or the vending machine are illegally copied or downloaded or a medium for storing the original digital contents is brought away, cannot be prevented.